News Archive for November 9, 2010

WELLINGTON, New Zealand—Kiwi-fruit harvests that generate 1.2 billion New Zealand dollars (US$956.9 million) a year of revenue for New Zealand's hard-pressed economy are under threat from the possible discovery of a virulent bacterial ...

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti—-A cholera epidemic that erupted in a rural valley last month and has killed nearly 600 people appears to be spreading through Haiti's capital city, putting hundreds of thousands at risk.

MUMBAI—A delegation of U.S. education officials visiting India alongside President Barack Obama is trying to push India to speed up its acceptance of foreign universities, an Indian government initiative that has been promised but appears ...

Muhammad Ali and Mike Tyson were magnets for the crossover fan that's all-important for the financial fettle of boxing. Without such galvanizing figures, interest in the sport has shifted to the question: Who's the mythical ...

BEIJING—Local officials in China's arid northwest have launched a new push for a vast water-diversion project that would pump raw sea water thousands of miles from the coast to the deserts of Xinjiang through a pipeline made of plastic ...

With Thanksgiving fast approaching, so, too, comes the start of the holiday shopping mayhem. Once again, digital cameras are rocketing to the top of wish lists, and once again, shoppers are tentatively entering electronics stores with ...

IAC/InterActiveCorp. is cutting 130 engineering jobs at its search engine business Ask.com, as the digital media and commerce company controlled by Barry Diller concedes the search business to larger rivals, like Google Inc. and Microsoft ...

Rockwell Automation Inc. reported sharply higher profit and revenue in its fiscal fourth quarter but said U.S. manufacturers remain "hesitant" about expanding their plants despite recent signs that the economy may be picking up ...

NEW YORK—A former Société Générale SA trader stole the French bank's proprietary computer code for its high-frequency trading business in hopes of using it to build a duplicate system at another firm, a federal prosecutor said Tuesday.

Last week marked the 100th anniversary of the death of Henri Dunant—the Red Cross founder who brought humanitarian laws to the battlefield. It is doubtful, though, whether the world's first Nobel Peace prize recipient would today still ...

Marc Bolland has had six months to work out how he plans to revive Marks & Spencer. On Tuesday, the former Wm Morrison boss set out what he says is an evolutionary rather than revolutionary strategy for the iconic U.K. retailer based on ...

PARIS—French lender Natixis SA reported third-quarter net profit below expectations, hit by one-off charges, but said it will be able to comply with new international banking rules without raising new capital.

BRUSSELS—The European Commission on Tuesday fined 11 airlines a total of €799 million ($1.11 billion) for forming a global cartel to fix air-freight tariffs, mainly fuel surcharges, ending an investigation that dragged on for years with the ...

ROME—The European Central Bank needs to exercise caution in winding down its unconventional monetary policy at a time when the Federal Reserve continues to pursue such measures, the chairman of one of Italy's largest insurers said ...

SINGAPORE—Sabana Shari'ah Compliant Industrial Real Estate Investment Trust, or Sabana REIT, filed a prospectus with Singapore's central bank for an initial public offering intended to raise as much as 696.1 million Singapore ...

BEIJING—China's foreign-exchange regulator on Tuesday announced measures to further crack down on speculative hot-money inflows, with senior officials in the country expressing concern in recent days that loose U.S. monetary policy ...

NEW YORK—Despite its plans to sell 25% more shares of BlackRock Inc. than it intended, Bank of America Corp. remains, at this point, short of the amount of capital it is supposed to have raised by a year-end deadline.

Vodafone is listening to investors. Following this summer's call by a minority shareholder for the chairman's resignation, the U.K. telecom company has published a strategic review that addresses shareholder concerns over its ...

Ireland appears to have lost the confidence of markets; Portugal may be heading that way, judging by the latest spike in bond yields. Can policy makers insulate Spain from the crisis? The euro zone's emergency bailout program can cope ...

What a difference a few days can make. On Friday, as U.S. President Barack Obama and Michelle Obama boarded Air Force One for their maiden trip to India, the mood in New Delhi was distinctly dour. By the time he wrapped up his visit Monday ...

NEW YORK—Comex copper surged over the $4 mark Tuesday morning as strong Chinese car-sales data and a weaker dollar lifted prices. The most actively traded contract, for December delivery, was recently up 2%, or 7.7 cents, at $4.0335 per ...

Consumers are spending again, but gone are the days of swiping and signing for everything from lattes to lawn furniture. Shoppers are reaching for paper money, and as they do, stores and even credit-card issuers are increasingly ready to ...

ROME—Enel SpA said Tuesday its third-quarter net profit fell 17% due to weaker generating margins and higher financial charges. The Italian utility said net profit was €1.02 billion ($1.42 billion), down from €1.23 billion in the same period ...

NEW DELHI – India's basmati rice exports in the current fiscal year through March 2011 are likely to fall between 5% and 7% from last year, as a rise in the rupee's value to the dollar has increased the export price, industry ...

NEW YORK—Gold prices moved solidly past $1,400 to a record as re-emerging concerns about debt from members of the bloc of nations that use the euro heightened investor desire for a safer place to put their money.

Things are returning to normal for Japanese electronics companies. That's good and bad. Rising sales in Japan and abroad, and some substantial restructuring in recent years, mean the companies have had a good first half. Toshiba's ...

NEW DELHI – India hasn't yet taken a view on allowing foreign direct investment in multi-brand retail, the Commerce and Industry minister said Tuesday, underscoring the government's cautious approach to further opening up the ...

AMSTERDAM—Crucell N.V. on Tuesday swung to a third-quarter net loss after writing down its contaminated pediatric Quinvaxem vaccine inventory and said it now expects full-year revenues will be in line with 2009.

LONDON—Do good soldiers make good managers? Shrinking military budgets across Europe mean more businesses are finding out. David Montgomery, a former British Army brigadier who is now a managing director with Benchmark Search Group, a ...

China's thirst for imported fossil fuels to power its surging economy will have a growing impact on international markets over the next 25 years, and drive global oil demand higher even as it declines in the West, the International ...

LONDON—The U.K. trade deficit narrowed slightly in September as exports rose by more than imports, in a tentative sign that sterling's weakness may finally be starting to boost demand for U.K.-produced goods.

NEW DELHI -- NIIT Technologies Ltd. may buy a company or a software product to help it get outsourcing contracts from the global healthcare industry, its chief financial officer, Pratibha Advani, said.

MUMBAI—India's central bank Tuesday reintroduced measures—this time for a longer period—to ease a cash crunch in the banking system in a clear sign that liquidity remains a problem for the country's lenders.

European stocks finished mostly lower Monday, taking a breather from last week's gains sparked by the Federal Reserve's second round of quantitative easing in the U.S. and after investors' focus switched back to the ...

TOKYO—Toshiba Corp. enjoyed a surge in fiscal second-quarter net profit, as electronics makers around the world raced to grab a piece of the burgeoning market for smartphones and tablet computers that use the flash memory chips that the ...

Aside from Jonathan Lethem, perhaps no writer is as closely associated with Brooklyn as Paul Auster, who has lived in Park Slope for decades and partly set his classic New York Trilogy of novels in the borough. "The bard of ...

MUMBAI—SKS Microfinance Ltd. said it will cut interest rates slightly in Andhra Pradesh state, where the microlending industry is trying to fend off rising hostility after a string of suicides by borrowers who were unable to pay back loans.

BP added risk to its Gulf well, an investigator said. The oil giant removed heavy drilling mud, used to keep explosive gas out of the well, before setting a final cement plug, the lead investigator for a presidential commission on the ...

The Dow industrials broke their six-session winning streak amid reignited concerns over European sovereign debt, slipping 37.24 points, or 0.3%, to 11406.84 after hitting two-year highs last week. The euro dropped against the dollar and ...

HONG KONG—Sands China Ltd. said Tuesday its third-quarter net profit more than doubled from a year earlier, driven by soaring gambling-revenue growth in Macau and strong performances at its casinos in Macau's Cotai area.

BEIJING—General Electric Co. Chairman Jeff Immelt said Tuesday the U.S. conglomerate feels welcome in China and is committed to the country, but protectionism in the world's second-largest economy remains a concern.

SEOUL—KT Corp. said Tuesday that its third-quarter net profit slipped 0.2% from a year earlier due to a one-off refund on cancellation of fixed-line services. However, brisk sales of iPhones and lower labor costs after last year's ...

(Please see Corrections & Amplifications item below.) With its concrete countertops and a steel wall, Jane Aboyoun's Clocktower condo in Brooklyn's Dumbo neighborhood has a look that was inspired by the area's industrial ...

The original sick man of Europe is looking positively sprightly these days. Turkey, whose forerunner the Ottoman Empire was described in such sickly terms prior to its collapse after World War I, was welcomed by bond buyers with open arms ...

MUMBAI–Reliance Power Ltd. Reliance Power signed a $2.2 billion deal with General Electric Co. and other U.S. companies on Saturday, when it also secured a $5 billion loan from Export-Import Bank of China, the company said.

During the opening minutes of "Play Dead," all the lights, including the red "exit" signs, are extinguished. Theatergoers can't see a thing—not the hands on their laps or the back of the person's head in front ...

KABUL—Afghanistan's mining minister decried an investigation over allegations he took bribes as the work of overzealous prosecutors and suggested the probe was the result of his efforts to reform the attorney general's office.

BEIJING—China's government will next year start extracting more money in dividends from the companies it controls, in a long-awaited step that could help level the playing field between private firms and the nation's massive ...

BEIJING—General Electric Co. said Tuesday it plans to invest more than $2 billion through 2012 to boost research and development in China and fund new local joint ventures in areas such as technology and financial services.

TOKYO—Japan's finance minister said Tuesday that the leaders of the Group of 20 industrial and developing countries may agree on the need for "indicative guidelines" to mend global trade imbalances, but they probably ...

Supporting emerging artists in theater, dance and film with seed money is at the heart of the Princess Grace Foundation's mission. Bonnie Pfeifer Evans, through the Charles Evans Foundation, is giving $100,000 to the Princess Grace ...

For the past four years, as Ford Motor Co. and General Motors Co. made big strides in upgrading their current car portfolios, Chrysler Group LLC was stuck with what many regarded as the most poorly engineered models on the market.

During her failed campaign to become New York's attorney general, Nassau County District Attorney Kathleen Rice promised to re-examine a notorious Long Island sex-abuse case from the 1980s. The case, depicted in the documentary film ...

More than 60 years after the victors in World War II devised new rules for currencies at Bretton Woods, N.H., and more than 30 years after Richard Nixon blew up that regime, the search is on for a new way to manage the tensions that come ...

BRUSSELS—The European Commission is likely to fine more than 10 airlines Tuesday, ending investigations into an alleged global cartel in air-freight transport that dragged on for years, people familiar with the case said Monday.

For breakfast we eat fried steak and eggs with hash browns and toast. We're a Football Town. OK, so it's egg whites with avocado because that's what that magazine recommended. But still: We're a Football Town.

The Giants' Shawn Andrews sat on the stool in the visitors' locker room Sunday, in no rush to get his uniform off—the uniform in which he'd just made his first NFL start in two years and his first-ever start at left tackle.

NEW YORK—General Motors Co. on Monday pitched its initial public offering to investors, presenting the auto maker as a way to buy into a recovery in the U.S. economy and providing new detail of its profit outlook.

Monday was a good day for every Scottish lass in New York. The St. Andrew's Society of the State of New York, founded in 1756 as an organization for individuals of Scottish heritage and descent, has opened its membership to women.

Lawyers for thousands of Ground Zero workers said they expected to meet a midnight deadline to move forward with an $815 million settlement for illnesses developed after working at the site, which would end a years-long legal stalemate and ...

The two biggest exporters in the world are China and Germany—with the U.S. a close third. But you'd never know it by listening to President Obama. In India this week he told a press conference, "We can't continue situations ...

Many cash-strapped U.S. states are slashing budgets for tobacco-prevention programs, raising alarms among public-health groups as the nation's progress toward getting adult smokers to quit has stalled.

Tom Foley, Connecticut's Republican candidate for governor, conceded his loss to Democrat Dan Malloy, as the state Republican party pressed for an investigation into balloting troubles in the state's largest city.

The credit crunch is easing in the U.S. but it's far from over. Banks loosened their lending standards in the third quarter, but loans remained hard to get by recent historical standards, a trend expected to continue for the foreseeable ...

LOS ANGELES—When Bruce Karatz was running KB Home, the giant home builder pulled in billions of dollars a year in revenue. But now, a mere $11 million could help determine whether Mr. Karatz spends more than a half decade in prison.

One of the top executives at casino company Wynn Resorts Ltd., Andrew Pascal, is resigning, the company disclosed in a filing Monday. Mr. Pascal joined the company seven years ago and has been the president of Wynn's Las Vegas ...

Robby Felix had just finished lifting weights with the rest of the Jets' practice squad last month when he spotted a team employee whom he knows as "the grim reaper." That nom de guerre belongs to Brendan Prophett, the ...

HONG KONG—The city is engulfed in a divisive debate as it prepares to set its first-ever minimum wage. Lawmakers passed the minimum-wage bill after a 41-hour session in July in response to growing public calls to tackle the widening wealth ...

NEW HAVEN, Conn.—A jury recommended the death penalty Monday for a man convicted of the brutal 2007 murder of a mother and her two daughters. Family members and at least two jurors wept as the verdict was read out.

TOKYO—In a tacit admission that the Japanese government is impotent when it comes to weakening the yen, the country's prime minister and finance minister have shifted gears and are now urging the country's companies to use the ...

It's not every day these columns praise the American Civil Liberties Union. Even less often will you find the ACLU standing up for pro-lifers. That, however, is exactly what's happening in Ohio—and it tells us a great deal about ...

Sarah Palin, delving into a major policy issue a week after the mid-term elections, took aim Monday at the Federal Reserve and called on Fed chairman Ben Bernanke to "cease and desist" with a bond-buying program designed to boost ...

(See Corrections & Amplifications item below.) Lawmakers aligned with the tea party are moving quickly to show their strength by trying to ban budget earmarking in the Senate, where support is still strong for the practice critics deride ...

New York Yankees catcher Jorge Posada may know how to position himself for a strike on the baseball field, but in a bowling alley, "I'm terrible," he said Sunday at the Jorge Posada Foundation Celebrity Basebowl Tournament at ...

It would be hard to find two more unlikely intellectual comrades than Robert Zoellick, the World Bank technocrat, and Sarah Palin, the populist conservative politician. But in separate interventions yesterday, the pair roiled the global ...

Just a few months after the stock market fell off a cliff early last year, Jeff Rottinghaus had the task of sifting through the wreckage for candidates to start a new mutual fund focused on U.S. large-capitalization stocks.

As the lame duck session of the Pelosi Congress nears, one fear is that Democrats will try to force through some last-minute liberal legislation, in particular "card check" to kill the secret ballot in union elections. Iowa ...

Autos Chrysler reported a third-quarter net loss of $84 million but raised its outlook, saying it will achieve an operating profit and positive free cash flow this year. Operating profit during the quarter was $239 million while revenue was ...

When I dropped my watch last year and the hour hand broke off, I took it back to the Midtown watch department store whose service department I've sadly gotten to know intimately over the years. I realize I ought to just give the ...

Every now and then a columnist ought to shock and dismay his most faithful readers. So here goes: Barack Obama gave a terrific speech yesterday to India's parliament, perhaps the best one of his presidency and potentially a true ...

Right now, virtually anywhere in Europe, elections can turn on debates over immigration and integration. In Sweden, extreme anti-immigration parties have gained a foothold in parliament for the first time. In Holland, the anti-immigrant and ...

OECD The paths of the world's leading economies appear to be diverging, with Brazil and China set to lag while Germany, the U.S., Japan and Russia continue to grow, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development said. The ...

A French doctor charged with tipping confidential information about a clinical trial to a hedge fund worked for a consulting company with a policy prohibiting such leaks, according to a person familiar with the matter.

Cable-news network MSNBC briefly suspended liberal host Keith Olbermann last week for crossing a line between the media and politics when it learned he donated $2,400 each to three Democratic Party candidates. But that line is increasingly ...

President Obama arrives today in Indonesia, a country he knows well, where he lived for part of his childhood and is extremely popular. Indonesia is on the other side of the world, 12,000 miles from Washington, and most Americans know ...

U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood told Wisconsin's governor-elect, Scott Walker, that the federal government will take back the $810 million in stimulus funding granted to the state for a high-speed rail line between Milwaukee ...

JERUSALEM—Israel has advanced plans for nearly 1,300 new housing units in predominantly Palestinian East Jerusalem, dealing yet another setback to American-led peace efforts as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu arrived in the U.S.

The euro declined against the dollar and yen amid concerns about debt problems of some euro-zone nations, especially Ireland. The cost of insuring against sovereign-debt defaults for Ireland, Portugal and Spain went up overnight.

Life's supposed to work a certain way in Texas. The steaks should be big, the wells should gush oil and the Cowboys shouldn't fire their coach after eight games. But after a 1-7 start, the Cowboys gave Wade Phillips the axe on ...

BAGHDAD—Leaders of Iraq's political blocs met for a televised conference Monday aimed at forming a government, but showed no signs of progress despite fresh pressure from a court order to convene parliament and a stream of terrorist ...

Ambac Financial Group Inc. filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection after the Internal Revenue Service questioned the accounting that allowed the bond insurer to receive more than $700 million in tax refunds.

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke may be an excellent economist, but he is not a very good bond salesman. Since his Aug. 27 speech at an annual Fed symposium in Jackson Hole, Wyo., he's been telling us that he thinks inflation is ...

KABUL—Afghanistan's attorney general will investigate allegations that election officials were complicit in fraud in September's parliamentary poll, a probe a deputy attorney general said "could have a huge effect on the ...

Gartmore Group's birthday celebrations look more like a day of remembrance. Last December, the U.K. asset manager was listed on the London Stock Exchange at 220 pence ($3.52). Almost a year on, its shares fell to just 107 pence on news ...

For decades, Deutsche Telekom AG has prospered by helping people communicate with one another. Now, the German telecommunications giant wants to connect its customers with an aspect of life most probably don't think about too ...

Scott Cote, a 41-year-old software engineer, lost weight, cut sodium and began exercising to control his blood pressure, all as a result of new attention being given to prehypertension. It's a precursor to hypertension, or high blood ...

As a recipe for investor euphoria, it is hard to beat the heady mix of China, the Internet and search. Throw in a mostly benign competitive environment plus the likelihood that the dollar will continue depreciating against the Chinese yuan, ...

Discussing the Iraq surge strategy in 2006, former President George W. Bush notes that during his presidency he read 14 biographies of Abraham Lincoln. The cause of his preoccupation with Lincoln is obvious: The Bush presidency will be ...

NEW YORK—Even the sale of a large portion of a stake in money-manager BlackRock Inc. may leave Bank of America Corp. with a shortfall in common equity before a year-end deadline set by U.S. regulators, which could force it to pay some ...

In recent years, even some of the biggest authors have lost gravitational pull with readers. But for John Grisham's 24th adult book, "The Confession," the e-book version has helped propel first-week sales beyond that of his ...

The old Silk Road has given way to flight paths, the caravans replaced by fleets of jumbo jets. But the vast trade delegations to Asia currently being led by President Obama and U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron underline the shifts in ...

Thom Filicia, who upgraded home furnishings for the hit television show "Queer Eye for the Straight Guy," seems to know how to sell homes, too. He just sold his SoHo apartment for $1.7 million to his neighbor, winning a large ...

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico—U.S. scouts at a baseball tournament here last month salivated over Cuban national team players potentially worth millions of dollars in the major leagues. To keep any of them from defecting, Cuban security restricted ...

(See Corrections & Amplifications item below.) The grim statistics have become a rallying point for activist groups: Some 72,000 Americans aged 15 to 39 are diagnosed with cancer every year, and more than 10,000 die. They make up less ...

BERLIN—A Spanish company's hostile bid for the German construction giant Hochtief AG has become a test case for German takeover law that could open Europe's largest economy to additional unsolicited foreign takeover offers.

(Please see Corrections and Amplifications below.) Certain heart patients taking blood thinner Plavix should still be treated with heartburn drugs to lower the risk of gastrointestinal bleeding despite concerns some stomach drugs may ...

On paper, the numbers tell you the Democrats held on to a majority in the Senate last week. In reality, things won't be quite that neat. In fact, on some issues the Republicans actually may have a functional majority, given the ...

ROME—Pope Benedict XVI called a world-wide meeting of cardinals to discuss the Vatican's response to sexually abusive priests, underscoring how the crisis is likely to loom large in the election of the next pope.

As the world's second largest economy, China is now a magnet for any expansion-minded business. It is not, however, a market without hazards. Lawyers Debevoise & Plimpton point out that in the past five years, roughly a quarter of ...

Business & Finance Citigroup chief Pandit opened the bank's largest Asian retail branch in Hong Kong, part of a push in the region that is paying dividends. Citi hopes the branch will become a Hong Kong landmark. Pandit said he ...

In the coming weeks, the United Nations will indict the killers of Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri in its first-ever tribunal to try terrorists. As the international prosecutors of the Security Council's Special Tribunal for ...

Dutch parliamentarian Geert Wilders was threatened with criminal punishment for hate speech from the moment his anti-Koran film Fitna hit the internet in March 2008. Last month, a Dutch judicial oversight body ordered that he be tried anew ...

Q: I have a corduroy jacket from the early 1980s that is now so faded around the edges that it keeps getting better. It is very New England "college professor," and women compliment me on it often. Now that I'm 58, I think I ...